


All you need to know is never let go

by lalejandra



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz and His Humans
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Gabe's dad is the best dad, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Size Kink, Weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2019-07-14 09:05:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16037291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: Bandom Big Bang 2013.  Gabe, Pete, and Meagan have a lot of sex, talk about their feelings, and hang out with Bronx. Feelingsful and id-riffic with a schmooptastic ending.





	All you need to know is never let go

Pete is in New York -- "For a thing tomorrow," he says, waving a hand carelessly -- and he curls up in the middle of Gabe's bed with the remote. Gabe sleeps carefully fitted around him, as always. When he wakes up, it's still dark in his room -- he gets eastern light on his bed, a blessing and a curse -- but it's light enough that he can see Pete staring at him with big eyes.

"Hey," he croaks. "Go back to sleep."

"Brain's too loud."

Gabe knows this script. "What are you thinking about?" he asks, and waits for Pete to say all the things making him anxious this morning, all the things he thinks will make him anxious throughout the day. He lists them, and Gabe helps him talk through how he'll deal with them. They do it on the phone sometimes, too. 

Gabe finds he looks forward to the anxiety-list calls more than he should; it's calming for him, too. Meditative.

Then Pete changes the fucking script.

"I'm thinking about how huge you are," he says. He looks down, and then back up at Gabe, like a long blink rather than him looking away. "Your hands are huge."

Gabe spreads out his fingers between them. "Not really."

Pete puts his fingers over Gabe's. They don't match up -- wrong hands, wrong direction. "Bigger than me. So much bigger than me."

Gabe stares at their hands. Pete's tanned dark and Gabe hasn't been in the sun for a while; Pete has dirty, ragged fingernails and Gabe's are scrupulously clean and manicured; Pete has tattoos, Gabe doesn't.

Pete clears his throat and Gabe starts at the noise, jerking away like they're doing something wrong even though he doesn't mean to and knows they're not. 

"I'm gonna take a shower before my thing," says Pete, and he's out of the bed before Gabe can even take a breath.

Once the shower goes on, Gabe lies on his back and holds his hand up. It's not that big. Not that much bigger than Pete's.

*

Gabe can't stop thinking about what a tiny lump Pete is when he's curled up next to Gabe in bed.

*

Gabe calls Travie. It's the only thing he can think of to do. Well, not really, but calling Bill about this would be _weird_. He gets right to the point.

"Does Pete talk to you about how big you are?" he asks, before Travie can even say hi.

There's a giggle on the other end. "Oh, honey," says Sonia. "Hold on."

"Shit," mutters Gabe. He wants a drink, a cigarette, and another drink.

"Baby boy, what are you saying to my girl, now?"

"I didn't think she was going to answer your phone."

"Hey, I'm just teasing. Why so serious?"

"Does Pete talk to you about how big you are?" Gabe repeats. "Like, you're so big, you're so tall, your hands are so big, I feel so tiny next to you, that shit?"

"Uh, no, but we don't bone, so maybe it's a special boning-friend thing."

"But... we don't bone."

Travie sighs and Gabe totally hears the impatience in it. Or maybe he's projecting, because he's fucking impatient with _himself_ about this. He should be able to figure out exactly what Pete wants -- he's always been able to before. 

"Maybe it's a special we-should-be-boning-friend thing."

"Pete and I decided it wouldn't --"

"No, _you_ decided. I remember when you decided. I was there when you talked yourself into it and then out of it again in, whatever, two hours."

"Travie."

"Sorry, was I supposed to let you rewrite history to suit yourself?"

"He'd just split from his wife!"

"We're going to have this discussion? You know what I think."

"You think I'm an idiot."

"I do. I do think you're an idiot. I think you should have gotten together with Pete the first time you had a chance, and you talked yourself out of it because of what had happened in February --"

"He tried to _kill himself_ \--"

"And then you talked yourself out of it because you were on his label, and then you talked yourself out of it because he was dating Ashlee, and then you talked yourself out of it because he was splitting from Ashlee, and, like, baby boy, I love you, but have you thought that maybe you're sending Pete mixed messages?"

Gabe swallows hard. "I'm _not_. He knows I love him. That's what matters."

"That's what matters, but you're also fucking with him."

"I'm not trying to fuck with him."

"I didn't say you were -- hold on." 

Gabe can hear Travie talking to Sonia, all, no, baby, hold on, I'll paint your toenails in a second, Gabey's having an existential crisis about his heart, yeah, I know, but go lie down, yeah, take your panties off, I'll lick you, yeah --

" _Trav_ ," says Gabe loudly. "Stop, I'm blushing."

Travie chuckles, low and hot, into the phone. "You love it."

"You should put out an album of you dirty-talking to Sonia. You'd hit number one in seconds."

"Your faith in my sex talk makes me feel great, Gabey."

"Well, I'm your friend. I have your back."

"I appreciate that. Do you have Pete's back?"

"You know I fucking do."

"Then figure out what you _really_ want from him and be honest with yourself before you go asking him if he wants you to call him tiny."

"He hates being short, though."

"Nope, you gotta negotiate with him, not me. I'm not involved in your sex life."

"Trav," whines Gabe. "He's _straight_."

"You wish," snorts Travie. "Wouldn't that make your life easy? I'm gonna go paint my girl's toes now, Gabe. Don't call back for at least three hours."

"Three hours? Come on!"

"Three hours," says Travie firmly. "I have a plan and a schedule to keep, baby boy. Respect that shit."

*

Gabe is bad about saying what he thinks unless it's going to fuck up the status quo. But even then he doesn't always say what he _thinks_ \-- he says what's going to fuck up the status quo. He says the opposite of what he thinks sometimes. He'd spent a long time saying what he really thought -- about books, about life, whatever. He wrote albums about what he thought. And basically everyone told him to fuck off -- everyone except Pete and his dad. So he still sometimes says what he really thinks to them.

But not _about_ Pete.

About what Pete should do, about Pete's feelings being valid. Hell, about Pete's caffeine intake.

Not about Gabe's _feelings_. They've talked about Gabe's existential crisis in late 2005, but not his sexuality crisis in early 2005. They've talked about how Gabe was scared, when Bianca left, that no one would ever love him, but not how scared he is that someone else is going to sweep Pete away from him the way Ashlee did. And they've talked about how Gabe loves the way being in love feels, but not the way he's so fucking scared that being with Pete for real would fuck him up. It's not being with a dude -- fucking Bill and Trav didn't fuck him up. Handjobs with Rob didn't fuck him up. 

It's _Pete_ fucking him up, Pete's existence, Pete's... prettiness. The way Pete makes Gabe's stomach jump when he smiles _still_ , ten years later.

Gabe doesn't even know _how_ to say any of that to Pete. Especially prefaced with, "I know you're straight, _but_." 

Gabe knows about being biromantic and heterosexual, he's read Tumblr. But Pete might not even be flirting with him. Maybe Gabe lost his chance a long time ago and Pete really does just think Gabe has big hands.

*

Now Gabe is kind of mad and worked up about it. Who the fuck does Pete think they are? Gabe is Gabe fucking Saporta. Pete is Pete fucking Wentz. What the fuck is this shit, anyway? 

*

He takes a taxi from LAX to Vic's, and they spend the night juicing and laughing at each other. Gabe paints her toenails. She explains some bullshit about Venezuelan politics. They carefully don't talk about Cobra and the canceled album, or how Gabe hasn't written anything since May, or why Gabe is really on the wrong coast. He's never loved her more.

*

When Gabe leaves Vic's house, he leaves a full pot of coffee and a frittata warming in the oven and a note with a heart. She doesn't need to know the cheese is Daiya. He thought about bringing some of that over to Pete's, but it's already noon. Chances that Pete has a small human and a giant bag of tacos: high.

Gabe is a big fan of the convertible Vic's dad bought her last year. It's tiny and goes _fast_. He gets pulled over twice, and tosses the tickets into the backseat that is barely big enough for the gremlin, much less someone Gabe's size. That's okay, he's not going to drive anywhere. He and Pete are going to _have this out_.

Well, actually, Gabe's pretty sure that as soon as he crosses the threshold, all his annoyance will go out of him in a big rush, and he'll eat a taco with Bronx on his lap, and spend the afternoon in the sun in Pete's backyard, playing dinosaurs and drinking slurpees and getting outraged on Meagan's behalf when she gets emails from her agent about which parts of her body total idiots think are imperfect.

And... he's totally right, except he'd neglected to factor Pete jumping onto him for a big hug when he got there, Meagan kissing him on the mouth to say hi and winking, making him blush horribly, and the gremlin's nap. 

Gabe lies in the sun, on a sheet so he doesn't have to be on dirt or grass, with Pete in swim trunks on top of him, Gabe's sweat sticking them together.

"When are you going to get another house with a pool?" murmurs Gabe into his ear. "I really want a pool right now."

"We have a hose," says Pete sleepily. 

"Not a Slip-N-Slide, though."

"There are, like, six different kinds of sprinklers."

"Not the same." Gabe yawns, turns his head, and runs his hand over the skin of Pete's back. Where his oldest tattoo is, there's raised scar tissue. Gabe can read the unhappiness of Pete's fifteen-year-old self in the bumps. Maybe instead of talking, they can just... figure each other out the way they always have. "You're so tiny."

Pete goes still under his hand, on top of him. "Yeah," he finally says, sounding a little cautious. "And you're huge."

"Yeah. I'm a lot bigger than you."

"Big hands. Really big hands."

Gabe rubs his thumb over the knobs of Pete's spine, all the way down to the hair where his swim trunks are slipping down, then back up, over the scars, over the big piece on his shoulders, neck, hair. Back down again.

"Really big hands," repeats Gabe, "and you're so fucking small. I could just carry you around everywhere I want you to go."

"I'm tiny," says Pete, and lets out a breath that feels cool against Gabe's hot skin. He starts to relax as Gabe rubs up to his neck again, relax relax relax, until Gabe is back down. Gabe's thumb dips under Pete's trunks, into the crack of his ass, just a little. Just a little, just until he shivers. 

"I bet everything about you is tiny," Gabe says softly. "Tiny little hands and feet. Tiny little face... tiny little ass."

His stomach churns while Pete shivers again. He could have gotten this so wrong, and then he'll have to flee to Travie's Miami house, where he'll be sexiled while Travie goes down on Sonia for three hours at a stretch. That actually makes Gabe feel kind of inadequate. Maybe he'll just go back to New York and lie on his floor and yell at the cleaning service about dust bunnies like he did the week Erin broke up with him.

"Tiny little dick," says Pete. His voice is hoarse. "Everything about me is tiny."

"Everything about me is huge," Gabe says. He shifts his hips to press against Pete. Gabe's got a semi; he wants Pete to feel it, to _know_ where this is going.

The last time they made out, back in 2005, they'd been pressed together in Gabe's bunk on Midtown's bus, and Gabe had courteously kept his dick away from Pete. Not this time.

"Your dick is so big," says Pete breathlessly, and _yes_ , Gabe is getting it right. So right.

"You feel how it's getting bigger? Just talking about how tiny you are turns me on." Gabe rolls his hips a little.

"You think it's hot how small I am?"

Gabe reaches for Pete's face. "Look at me, Wentzlet. Hey." Pete finally looks at him and Gabe takes a deep breath. This is it. Trav will be so proud. "I think you're really hot."

" _And_ you think it's hot that I'm small?" Pete bites his lip.

"Yeah. I think it's hot that you're so fucking tiny. Look at your hands." Gabe lifts one of Pete's hands off his shoulders, making Pete's hips press down onto him. He's hard. Oh, _fuck_ , thank God. "Tiny little hands. Little nails." Gabe sucks one of Pete's fingers into his mouth, and Pete grinds his hips against Gabe's stomach.

"Fuck," says Pete, his voice all shaky. "Gabe."

"I bet I could fit your whole dick in my mouth, it's so small, right? Little tiny dick. Can't even see it when I have my hand wrapped around it."

"Y-yes -- yeah. Yes." Pete grinds against him again. His dick is definitely not really that small. Gabe's seen it more than once, felt it in mornings when he and Pete have slept in the same bed. But Pete's clearly getting off on _thinking_ it's tiny.

And that is really fucking hot, actually.

"Sit up. Let me see your tiny little dick." Gabe pushes at Pete's shoulders until he's sitting on Gabe's stomach, straddling him. Gabe smooths his fingers over the inside of one of Pete's knees. "Aw, am I too big for you to sit on? You look like a tiny little doll."

Pete beams and blushes at the same time, looking so fucking young, one hand cupped over his smile.

Gabe reaches up and pulls his hand away from his mouth, leans up to nip at his fingers, kiss them. "Tiny little fingers," he breathes. "You're so small and cute. So lovely." He kisses Pete's palm. "Show me that tiny little doll dick."

Pete reaches into his trunks and pulls his dick up and out, but just a little, so just the head is peeking out above the waistband. "It's so small," he whispers.

"Fits the rest of you." Gabe puts his hands on Pete's hips and rubs his thumb over the head of Pete's cock. "Look how small your dick is. My thumb covers it up."

Pete's hips jerk and he loses his balance. Gabe quickly brings up his knees; now Pete is sitting on his fucking dick. He really hopes that's not going to wreck it. The last time they talked about dudes' dicks, Pete still wasn't into them -- but that was, what? 2010? Maybe shit's changed.

Shit's changed for Gabe.

"Your dick is _so_ big," moans Pete, and it should sound stupid, like something out of porn, something Gabe would laugh at -- but, God, wow, hearing it come out of Pete's mouth, in Pete's voice, his head falling back, while he's rolling his ass against Gabe's dick and letting Gabe touch _his_ dick... it's too fucking much. Gabe might come in his pants like a twelve year old.

"Fuck yeah, it's big," says Gabe. He digs his fingers into Pete's hips, rolls his dick against Pete's ass. Through two sets of swim trunks _sucks_ , but he's not going to stop. "You want me to split you open with my giant dick? Fuck you till you can't breathe?"

"Oh, god," groans Pete. He holds onto Gabe's wrist and leans forward, rubbing the purple head of his dick against Gabe's thumb, his clothes, the rough top of his trunks. "I want that. Inside me, yeah, split me open, f-fuck me -- fuck me h-hard."

"Gonna, gonna fuck you so hard. Can your tight little ass fit my huge dick?" Gabe twists his thumb and scrapes it over the head of Pete's cock and Pete makes a strangled noise. "Like that?"

"Yeah, fuck, yeah, I'm gonna --"

"Show me," encourages Gabe. "Come for me. Show me how much come you have in your tiny little dick. Come on. My hand is so big. Fill it up."

The more he talks, the more Pete looks like he's going to explode, the faster Pete's hips move. Gabe's fingernail catches in the slit and Pete comes everywhere -- over his own stomach, Gabe's stomach, Gabe's hand. Gabe watches his dick jerk, Pete's trunks holding it down but not still, and then looks up at Pete's face. He looks like he's about to cry, but his head is thrown back, throat long and brown and gorgeous. Gabe pushes up and sucks skin into his mouth -- Pete doesn't really sweat, but his skin is still salty and warm and Gabe is going to leave a big mark. And keep rubbing his thumb over the head of Pete's dick until Pete's hips are jerking involuntarily and he's making tiny -- _tiny_ \-- little ah-ah-ah noises that might turn into Gabe's name when they grow up.

*

Gabe is so fucking hard. He's gearing up to try to figure out whether Pete _actually_ wants to get fucked or just wants to _talk_ about getting fucked while Gabe jerks off when there's a knock on the window above them and Gabe hears it slide open.

"Daddy," says Meagan, "your presence is requested."

Pete grunts, then takes in a long, audible breath through his nose and peels himself off Gabe. He keeps his head turned away.

"We're coming," Gabe says, and pushes to his feet. 

"Thanks." The window slides shut as Gabe stands. Pete is groping against the house, and -- hose. He turns it on himself, still not looking at Gabe.

"Um." Gabe rubs his face. "Pete. Come on."

Pete sighs and scrubs at his belly with one hand, keeping the cold water turn on himself.

"Hey. Dude." Gabe crosses the yard to him. The water is fucking freezing where it pools around Gabe's feet. He puts a hand over Pete's on the hose and turns it off, peels Pete's fingers off to let it drop. 

"I can't right now," says Pete.

"Fuck that. You have to. Right now." Gabe's voice sounds harsh to his own ears, so he wraps his arms around Pete from behind, nuzzling his jaw, and takes a deep breath. Pete smells like earth and sweat and the baby powder deodorant he and Meagan share, and bitter come. Gabe lets how much he loves Pete into his voice, lets it out. "Hey, baby. Please. Don't pull away."

"Gabe, come on, I --"

"Look how tiny you are when I'm holding you." Gabe runs his hands along Pete's arms and over his hands. "You're my tiny little Pete. That was so amazing, I --"

"You didn't come." Pete's still staring down; Gabe hopes he's staring at their hands together, rather than his toes or the ground or something.

"We didn't have time. I'll come later." Gabe presses against Pete's back. "I'm still hard. Just being near you."

"You didn't have to, like, indulge me."

"I wasn't. It made me hot. You saw how turned on I was."

"But you didn't come."

"We weren't trying to make me come. Seriously, we'll go into the house and play with Bronx and chill out and tonight we'll make me come. I'm not some stupid kid who thinks it only counts if we come at the same time or something."

Pete sighs, and leans back against Gabe. Fuck. Relief.

"I'm so fucking into you," he says, and Gabe feels Pete's heart speed up. "I never thought we would... I just..."

"I know. I was a dumbass. I'm into you too. And your tiny little dick. And... you." Gabe nuzzles his jaw again. "Will you kiss me when it's just us?"

Pete twists his head up and Gabe leans down a little and there it is. Their mouths fit together perfectly.

When the window slides open again, this time it's Bronx yelling for Daddy. Gabe sends him inside and turns the hose on his dick. It's freezing cold, but it still takes a while for Gabe to calm down enough to go inside.

*

Travie is smug. Gabe figures it's only fair and lets him get a couple of digs in while Pete and Megs are putting the gremlin to sleep.

*

Meagan comes down, yawning. Gabe looks up from his phone -- he's making fun of how many pictures of Bill with his shirt open to his navel he can find on Tumblr -- and watches her curl up on the end of the couch.

"Daddy and Bronx special time," she says around another yawn. 

"Are you really okay with this?" That is not what Gabe meant to say.

" _This_ like you and him? Yeah, of course." She shrugs. "It's nice that you're finally dealing with this stuff."

"But he's _your_ boyfriend." 

Meagan snickers. "He's your boyfriend too, dumbass." She stands back up, stretching, cracking her neck. "Brownies?"

"Brownies?"

" _Brownies_ ," she says slowly, raising her eyebrows. "Or, like, cake pops?"

"Oh, _brownies_ ," says Gabe. "Not the kind Pete makes, though?"

"No, these are from the store. I don't know why he kept fucking making them even though he had a card and could just buy the good ones."

"The first time he made pot brownies, he just mixed the pot in. Like, the dry..." Gabe waves a hand.

Meagan makes the cutest little grossed-out face Gabe has ever seen, sticking out her tongue and shuddering and everything. "His butter isn't much better because he uses such skunk weed for it. I don't think he can tell the difference between the shit and the good stuff."

"It's because I was straight edge for so long," says Pete, coming down the stairs. "Are you really impugning my honor?"

"Between Meagan and Trav, you should be able to buy decent pot and make a halfway decent brownie," says Gabe, "and yet."

"Mean," says Pete, but he cuddles right up to Gabe's side and makes big eyes at Meagan. "Are you making brownies?"

"No, I'm going into the kitchen and getting some of the brownies we got the other day. Weirdo." She grins at him. 

"Come back here and say that to my face!" Pete calls after her, but stays tucked up against Gabe's side.

"I was thinking about what I said before," says Gabe in a low voice, looking down at him. "That doesn't have to happen tonight."

Pete twists his neck to look up. "You don't want me?"

"I do. But we don't have to rush it."

"We've wasted a lot of time already, though."

"Not wasted. We did something else with that time." Gabe's thought about this a lot. "Now we're in the right place. Both of us. Places."

"I'm not breaking up with Megs." Pete bites his bottom lip and it's so -- Gabe has to lean down and bite it too.

"I'm not asking you to. You can have us both."

"You're Mr Monogamy, though."

"Things change." Gabe gentles his mouth and teeth and kisses Pete.

"I don't want you to think my way with my rules is the only way you can have me." Pete makes a face. "Was that, like, a super bad humble brag?"

"No, and that's not what I think. Trav told me to sit down and think about what I really want from you, so I did. And I came up with --" Gabe breaks off as Meagan comes back into the room with two brownies and a cake pop.

"Do you need me to leave?" she asks. "Because I should know if I'm driving somewhere before I eat this." She tosses the cake pop to Gabe and the other brownie to Pete.

"No, I just don't know if you want to hear this."

"I'll listen if you're not uncomfortable." She plops back down onto the couch. "Pete can come sit in my lap while you talk."

"That's... weird."

"Too weird?"

"No? I don't know?"

"Let's try it." She opens her arms. "Gimme that wild Peter."

Pete wriggles against Gabe like a puppy and then launches himself at Meagan, leaping onto her. They both giggle, and then Meagan starts _laughing_ , mouth open and eyes shut, and she's so fucking gorgeous and they're so... they're so _intimate_ , it hits Gabe right in the stomach. He looks down and fumbles open the cake pop wrapper and takes a tiny bite.

It's so fucking good, he doesn't even care it's not vegan.

"You come sit too," says Pete. His head is on her stomach, and he lifts up his legs. "Come on."

Gabe sits, and holds on to Pete's legs. His hand is over the tattoo of his face. Pete always has to take his calls. They're tied together forever no matter what.

And Pete never lets anyone go, the same way Gabe doesn't if he can help it.

They're going to be okay.

"I was just saying," he says to his own face, "that Travie told me to figure out what I wanted from Pete. And what I wanted was exactly what we have, but, like, with making out and some kind of sex and maybe some... some hand-holding and shit." He stuffs the entire rest of the cake pop into his mouth so he can't keep talking.

"That is really sweet," says Meagan approvingly.

Gabe watches Pete wriggle his toes. 

"Gabe Gabe Gabe," chants Pete. "We have rules, though. I mean, there are rules for Megs, so I think I have to follow the same ones."

"My rules are for casual sex, though." That makes Gabe's head jerk up. He looks over at them. "Like," she continues, "if you and Gabe are going to be fucking, but Gabe's not fucking anyone else and you're not fucking anyone except me, I don't think you should have to follow the same rules. It's not the same thing."

"Casual sex?" asks Gabe.

"She fucks a lot of hot chick models," Pete tells him cheerfully, mouth full of brownie. When he grins, his teeth are coated in chocolate.

"That's really --"

"Hot," Pete says in unison with him. "I know. She won't let me watch, though."

"I'm not asking to watch you and Gabe together." Meagan shrugs. She bites into her brownie. "Hey, Pete, look." When Pete turns his head, she smiles. Brownie teeth.

They are made for each other.

Gabe clears his throat. "You could watch us together if you wanted. It would be a little weird, I guess, but..."

She shrugs. "It's something to discuss later. Not now, I don't think. You and Pete need to figure yourselves out first, you know? Maybe in a few months we'll talk about, like, whatever, exhibitionism and, like --"

"Cuckolding!" Pete twists up to look at her again. "Oh my god, you were serious?"

Meagan kisses his forehead and leaves a little bit of brownie on it. She swallows and then licks it up, kisses him again. "Of course I was."

"I thought you were just talking sexy."

"Well, yeah, but now we can do it, so we should think about it. If Gabe is up for it."

"Cuckolding?" says Gabe.

"Yeah, like, where you tie me up and fuck my girlfriend and I'm not allowed to play and then I have to lick your come out of her and --" Pete stops when Meagan reaches down and grabs his dick. "God, Megs."

"You can tell Gabe your fantasies later." She nuzzles at his neck the exact same way Gabe likes to. Maybe it's just something about Pete that forces people to want to scent-mark him like a kitten.

Gabe's dick is pretty well on its way to being hard.

"Um," he says. "I really want to..." He gestures meaninglessly. "What are the rules?"

"Condoms, tests every three months, honesty about feelings, no getting pregnant," says Pete promptly.

"I would really love to see Gabe get you pregnant, actually." Meagan rubs her hand over Pete's chest. "Oh my god. Your nipples would be hard all the time, I bet." She pinches one of Pete's nipples and he yelps.

"Oh, God," murmurs Gabe. 

"I would be so good at being pregnant," says Pete wistfully, looking up at her. 

"You would, baby." She leans down and kisses his mouth. Her hand moves down and rubs his belly like he's actually pregnant. Gabe is pretty sure his eyes are going to fall out of his head before this night is over. Especially if, at some point, he gets to fuck Pete and talk about how tiny he is again.

Picturing himself fucking Pete with no condom, Gabe's come inside him, Pete getting _pregnant_ , a _baby_... Gabe is so hard, and his dick is pissed that he didn't get to come earlier, it wants to come _now_.

Pete's foot nudges Gabe's thigh, and Gabe looks up. "Are we freaking you out? I didn't mean to freak you out."

"No," says Gabe hoarsely. "I'm just thinking about fucking you bare and getting you pregnant."

Pete beams at him and Meagan giggles.

"See, baby?" she says. "He fits right in."

*

Meagan ends up in the guest room with her tablet _and_ Pete's -- one to watch Netflix on, and one for shopping, she explains, and that makes sense to Gabe, even though Pete rolls his eyes -- and Gabe ends up in the bed. There are still thick leather cuffs chained to the posts. Pete doesn't even blush when Gabe fingers one.

The bed smells like dirty sex, dirty sheets, and dirty laundry. Gabe is positive Pete and Meagan always have dirty sex. There's no other option.

"I don't want to bore you," says Gabe softly.

"Why would you?" Pete is stripping down, throwing his dirty clothes onto the pile of stuffed animals.

"I'm not always, like, let me split you open with my big dick and threesomes and whatever. Sometimes I just want to kiss and be held and..." Gabe shrugs and looks down at the sheets. They're stained even though they're white. Some of the stains are really faded. Lived-in. Everything Pete has, even brand-new hoodies, looks like he _lives_. It's something Gabe's always loved about him.

"Well." Pete kicks off his last sock and it goes flying. Gabe resolutely does not find it and put it in a laundry basket. He doesn't think Pete even _owns_ a laundry basket. "Sometimes the idea of being touched for sex, like, makes me have a panic attack and flip out and I need to put on six hoodies and be under ten blankets and, like, get cuddled. So. We're even, probably."

"I don't think that sounds even."

"Yeah, mine is worse than yours."

"Don't be a jerk. I'm serious. I don't want to disappoint you. Like, have you been thinking about how great this is going to be for years? What if it's not great?" Gabe can't actually take his eyes off Pete's dick, hard and curving up toward his stomach and purple and hairy and, fuck, his mouth is actually watering.

"Earlier was pretty great." Pete reaches down and strokes his dick a couple of times. "We could do that again."

"You being tiny and me being huge?"

"I'm pretty fucking tiny." 

"That's true. You are." Fuck it. Gabe strips out of his shirt, pushes off his shorts and briefs, kicks it all to the end of the bed. "I want to put my dick in you. Watch it split you apart. Let me fuck you open."

Pete moans and scrambles up onto the bed, kneels at the end. He puts his hand on his dick again, fisting it, holding it so only the head and his balls show. "My dick is so fucking tiny," he says, all breathless. "Gabe, it's so small."

"And mine is huge." Gabe goes slow, jerking himself, making it seem like it takes forever to get from his balls to the head. He twists his hand over the top. "Bring the lube. We're going to need a lot if your ass is as small as your dick."

"Under the pillow." 

The head of Pete's dick gets more purple when he squeezes. Gabe wants to suck on it. But fucking first. He gropes under the pillow and finds two different lubes, raises his eyebrows. Pete grins at him. 

"Whatever, dude, lube is useful."

"Don't whatever dude me." Gabe flips the top off one and squeezes some onto his hand. "Fucking come here. I want to see you straddle me. Stretch those short little legs."

"I'm not short, I'm _tiny_ ," protests Pete, but he crawls over to Gabe and straddles his thighs. Gabe squirts lube down over Pete's dick and hand and it makes Pete shout, then he goes back to stroking his own cock. 

"Bring that tiny dick closer. Rub it on mine," Gabe orders, and Pete _does it_ , he does it, he rubs his dick against Gabe's. Gabe gasps, choking on air, and then Pete gets on his hands and knees and rubs his face against Gabe's dick, eyes closed, looking totally blissed out, and that's it. Gabe's never going to breathe again.

"I'm going to come if you keep doing that." 

Pete pulls back and looks up at him from under his stupid, adorable eyelashes, his face shiny from the lube that rubbed off Gabe's dick onto his skin. Oh, God. 

"I bet you have so much come inside you. Your balls are huge."

Gabe laughs a little, choking on it. "I'm serious. Do you want me to come inside you or on your face?"

"I have to pick one?"

"For tonight you do. We can do the other one another time."

Pete drops his head and _sniffs_ Gabe's cock, then sits back. "Come inside me," he says.

"If I can make it long enough to open you up." Gabe crooks a finger at him. "You're so small. Can I even get a finger inside you?"

"You can, you can," says Pete. He swings off Gabe's legs and comes farther up the bed, carefully avoiding Gabe's dick when he straddles Gabe's chest.

"Next time I'm going to suck your tiny little cock." Gabe reaches under Pete. "Lift up a little." He's got so much lube on his hand and it feels weird against his stomach, but it lets him slide pretty easily into Pete. One finger. "How big does my finger feel?"

"So big, Gabe, wow, so huge inside me."

Pete is loose, like he loosened himself up first, or like maybe he's just so into it, his muscles are relaxed. Gabe doesn't know which one is hotter. Up on his knees like this, straddling Gabe's chest, his thighs are tight and hard, and they shake when Gabe gets in a second finger. His fingers aren't super thick, but Pete clenches down on them and starts to move his hips a little.

"You like this, huh?" says Gabe. His voice is so scratchy, it doesn't even sound like his. 

"You're so huge inside me." Pete grabs his dick and squeezes it at the base. "Fuck, Gabe."

"You think my fingers are huge, wait until I sit you down on my cock and make you take it. You'll feel me in your fucking throat."

"I want to, please," begs Pete. "Come on, please, fuck me with your cock, get it inside me, fuck me open for you."

"You're so small, I can just move you around anywhere I want you," says Gabe. He pulls his fingers out slowly, then massages Pete's rim with three fingers. All three dip in shallowly and make Pete's breath hitch, so Gabe grabs his hips with both hands and moves him. Pete doesn't fight him, works with him, so it feels like Gabe really is lifting Pete and moving him around, which is, god, so fucking hot, wow. 

And then Pete is literally hot, squeezing the head of Gabe's dick, sliding down, all slick heat. He catches, though, and Gabe pants out, "More lube, more lube," and finds it, gets it all over his hand and the bed and Pete's knee before he can get it all over his dick. He should have thought to actually stuff some into Pete's ass, but he just wants to get _inside_ and Pete is _sitting down on his dick_ and this is game over, ding ding ding, all the lights and fireworks going off inside Gabe's head, behind his eyes. He's watching Pete but can barely see him through the sparks.

"Fuck," says Pete, and Gabe realizes he's been saying it over and over. "Oh, fuck, fuck, oh, fuck."

"You're okay? Are you okay?" Gabe digs his fingers into Pete's thigh.

"Your dick is _actually_ huge," says Pete. "Oh fuck."

"You're actually tiny," replies Gabe. He tries to relax. "Shit. Oh my god. You're actually so fucking tight, Pete. Like, in real actual life, oh my god."

"In me," whispers Pete. "Shit."

"I _can't_ ," groans Gabe. "Oh my god." He tenses his stomach muscles and braces his feet and rolls them over so Pete is on the bottom. "I have to fuck you."

"Fuck me, come on," urges Pete, getting a leg up around Gabe's hip. "Shit, get a pillow under my ass first."

Gabe grabs one with his lube-covered hand, fuck, that was dumb, but somehow he gets it under Pete's ass before he starts to fuck in, hips moving so fast, bracing himself over Pete, head hanging down. He can smell Pete, and feel him, and taste him when he opens his mouth, lick his skin anywhere he can reach. Pete's hand moves against Gabe's stomach -- jerking himself off, Gabe realizes, and that's good, because Gabe is whiting out, fucking into Pete as hard as he can, _claiming him_.

*

Pete does this thing where he rubs his fingers over his hole, pulling Gabe's come out of it, and groans. It's, like, half ridiculous theatrical porn and half the hottest thing Gabe's ever seen. When Pete gets bored with doing that, he rolls over and sprawls on Gabe and they kiss until they fall asleep. Gabe falls asleep, anyway. 

It's the first time since 2005 -- that he can remember, anyway -- that he and Pete have fallen asleep face to face.

*

"Go back to sleep," whispers Pete. Gabe wants to stay awake, wants to pull Pete closer, but he's asleep again before he even really realizes he's awake.

*

Gabe refuses to believe it means something that he wakes up alone. He wakes up alone a lot. Even when he falls asleep with Pete. Pete's like a cat -- he falls asleep with a human, wakes up, moves away, falls asleep with a computer, wakes up, moves away. Ends up on top of the kitchen counter, curled up in a little ball, head pillowed on a bowl of popcorn. That one only happened once, but Gabe is _never_ going to forget it.

He takes a shower, scrubs. He's really _not_ that big, and, yeah, he's bigger than Pete, but it's not like there's _actually_ that much of a real difference between them. Gabe isn't even a full foot taller, since Pete is still insisting he's 5'4".

It's definitely hot to think about, especially the way they were... playing with it. Pete's breathless "You're so big" echoes in Gabe's ears, and if he closes his eyes, a fist slick with conditioner around his dick, he can pretend Pete is _there_ , whispering to him, watching him. Telling him how huge he feels, how Pete loves being split open, how Gabe is so fucking big, he can just cover Pete up.

Gabe jerks off before he towels off, rinsing his come down the drain with the deep conditioner. He smells himself before he steps out -- that must have been Meagan's.

He dresses and wanders downstairs. The house is quiet. No small human. No beautiful model human. No tiny punk rock perv. On the couch, Bear lifts his head and sniffs, goes back to napping. 

Gabe thinks maybe he has a good idea. The coffee pot is hot, so he pours a cup and settles on the other end of the couch with his phone. No one is there, so no one saw him use the limited edition s'mores coffee creamer, and it is _delicious_. He admits he's not clear on or really down with s'mores, but the flavor in coffee is great. Even Bear deigns to be a little interested. 

He's ready to tell himself to save the freakout and just enjoy some quiet, but then he checks his phone. He has six million messages and eighteen hundred thousand @replies, and one text from Pete: _wanted to stay all morning had to take bx to playgroup back by 10 can still feel you inside me xo_

Gabe has no equilibrium.

*

"What are you doing?" asks Pete, turning a little to look at Gabe.

"Yoga," manages Gabe.

"You're not breathing though."

"I'm upside-down, jerk." Gabe lets his legs fall and he collapses to the ground in a heap. He'd thought he'd grown out of the gangly-puppy stage of having long arms and legs, but no. No, all it took was the decision to relax and Meagan's yoga DVDs. It might have helped if he'd watched one, but instead he'd taken the dog to the backyard and challenged him to a handstand contest.

He's not more relaxed.

Pete sits down and pushes his toes against Gabe's and smiles happily. "Tiny."

"Your feet are so fucking tiny," says Gabe, flopping back. "I don't know why you bother to wear your shoes a size too big. Everyone knows you're small."

"The smallest," agrees Pete. "I have the tiniest feet. And yours are huge."

"Where's the small human?" asks Gabe. "And Meagan?"

"Meagan has a job and the small human is gone until at least one or two. It's not my turn to do playgroup, so I get to come home and see you."

Gabe has no equilibrium and no idea what they're doing, but it was so fucking hot and he wants to do it again.

"See how huge I am, taking up your whole yard." He sits up and leans forward, tugs at Pete's foot. "Look at your tiny fucking toes. Damn, Pete. You're so tiny, like your toes are tinier than Bear's."

Pete gasps a little and wiggles his toes. "Smaller than Bear's?"

"Tiny little puppy toes. Sausage toes." Gabe runs his thumb over the pad of Pete's foot. "Dirty toes. If you clean your toes, we'll see how many I can fit in my mouth."

"How many of my toes?"

"They're so small, do you think all of them?"

"You're going to put my toes in your mouth?" repeats Pete.

Gabe looks up and tries to pin him with a glare. "I'm going to enjoy how fucking tiny you are. You're a sweet little thing and I want a _feast_. Do you want that too or do you want to --"

"I want that too," says Pete hurriedly. "Do you want to wash my feet for me to make sure they're clean?"

Gabe looks at him speculatively. "I'll wash _everything_ to make sure you're clean. Catalog every place where you're tiny with my tongue."

Pete shivers. "Every place?"

"Every place. My tongue all over you. My big, long, thick tongue all over your tiny little body. Your nipples. Your tiny little fingers. Your tight, small, hot hole. And then I'm going to fuck you again, fill your tiny body up with all my come. I had so much come last night, do you remember?"

Pete groans. "It leaked out. I'm too small to take it all."

"I'm going to keep trying. Keep stuffing you up with my come."

Pete toes dig into Gabe's skin, like he's trying to use them to grip Gabe. "And -- and when we fuck -- you --"

Gabe has no clue where Pete's going -- but then he remembers, for some reason, how crazy it had made Pete when Meagan talked about getting him pregnant. He bites his lip.

"And then when we fuck," he says hoarsely, "we'll put a baby in you. You're so tiny, but I bet you can keep it alive. And then we'll have a little baby with your eyes and skin and --"

"Your hair." Pete's rubbing his belly almost unconsciously. "A baby with your hair and ears."

"Gotta let the come stay in this time. Can't be playing with it."

"I will. I promise." Pete looks at him. "Gabe."

"I need to fuck you now," Gabe tells him. "Like, ten minutes ago, so double now. Please. I'll beg."

Pete pulls a tiny tube of lube from his jeans. "Don't beg. I'm holding that in reserve. Just tell me how tiny I am."

"Let me see those tiny nipples," says Gabe. "Let me see your tiny little dick."

*

Meagan comes home that night right as they're trying to convince Bronx that vegetables on pizza would actually be delicious. Gabe even busts out the "broccoli are trees" argument that he remembers scoffing at when _he_ was a kid. 

The more time he spends with Bronx, the more time he spends convinced that parenting is a total scam, all dedicated to convincing kids that what they know is true is bullshit, and that adult bullshit is the truth. 

One look at Meagan's tearstained face, and Gabe is willing to take the hit. "Go," he says to Pete. "Bronx, how do you feel about _mushrooms_?"

Bronx watches Pete to go Meagan. "Meggy is sad," he says to Gabe in a low voice.

"Yeah, looks like," agrees Gabe. "But your daddy is going to make her feel better."

Bronx looks at Gabe suspiciously. "I still don't want broccoli."

"What about tomatoes? Like, there's tomato sauce, and then we could do extra tomatoes on top?" Gabe doesn't watch Pete guide Meagan out of the room, into the kitchen, out onto the deck. He kind of feels like he's jealous? Or maybe like he's _supposed_ to be jealous. He can't work up any anger, though -- he's just mostly worried about Meagan.

"Tomatoes aren't a vegetable, Uncle Gabe."

"Yes, they totally are."

"They're a _fruit_ ," says Bronx scathingly. "Fruit doesn't belong on pizza. No pineapple! Daddy always wants pineapple. It's bad."

Oh god. "What about tomato sauce, though? That goes on pizza."

Bronx looks stricken for a moment and then says firmly, "No sauce."

Well, fuck. "Just cheese and bread?"

"Pizza is dumb." Bronx throws himself back against the couch and folds his arms, sticks out his chin. He looks so much like Pete, Gabe can't stand it.

"Maybe we shouldn't have pizza tonight. What about tacos?"

"We have tacos _every night_." Bronx kicks one foot against the couch. "I hate everything."

"Do you hate burgers?" Gabe raises his eyebrows. "Fries? Milkshakes?"

"Nobody brings burgers here."

"We can go get them."

"Daddy doesn't like to go get food."

"What if Daddy stays with Meggy and you and me and Bear go get burgers?"

Bronx glares at him, but asks, "Can we eat them in the park?"

"Yeah, of course," Gabe promises rashly. There's a park?

Like magic, Bronx's face changes and he stands up, beaming. "Okay, come on, come on, Bear, get your leash, come on, Uncle Gabe, let's get burgers!"

Gabe makes sure his wallet's in his back pocket, grabs his phone and Bear's leash and a hoodie for Bronx, and heads out. Then he has to come back for the keys to the SUV, because that's where Bronx's car seat is, and there's no way he can drive Bronx around in Vic's convertible. Then he has to come back for a sweatshirt for himself. Then he sits in the SUV and texts Pete as Bronx kicks the seat and squeals while Bear licks his face.

_Taking Bronx for burgers. Let me know what you and Megs want. Will bring some home._

He sends it and feels stupid, so he types in another one: _Love you. Hope Megs is okay._

He feels better after he sends that one. So stupid. Love is so stupid. It feels so _good_ , though. Better than anything else he's tried, anyway.

*

Bronx refuses to get lettuce or tomato or cheese on his burger. He also refuses the bun, and eats it like Bear, no hands, just face. Gabe lets him. Whatever, it can't hurt the little dude, and Gabe doesn't want to deal with a tantrum in the park. 

After they eat, they nap in the setting sun. 

"Just like dinosaurs," says Bronx, practically asleep but still petting Bear. "I'm a dinosaur."

Gabe stares up at the leaves on the tree they're under and thinks about how to convince Bronx dinosaurs ate kale and tofu.

*

 _cm hm no fd_ says Pete's text; come home, no food, Gabe translates. He stops at a smoothie place anyway, carrying a sleepy Bronx in one arm, Bear padding next to them, and gets four smoothies -- one fruit, one veg, one chocolate with extra protein, and one lemon and ginger that burns his nose when he sniffs it. They'll keep in the fridge until morning if no one wants to drink them. Gabe is just hedging his bets.

Meagan's eyes are so swollen when they get back to the house, Gabe is grateful Bronx is asleep and doesn't have to see it. He puts Bronx to bed, lets him sleep in his little baby briefs. Bear is supposed to sleep on his bed in the living room, but Gabe lets him stay with Bronx. Whatever, life is hard enough when you're almost five.

When Gabe gets back downstairs, Pete is in the kitchen -- drinking a smoothie from the slurping sounds -- and Meagan is on the couch.

"Can I have him tonight?" she asks quietly, looking away. "I know you're here for... but I --"

"It's fine. Unless you'd sleep better in the middle?" Gabe doesn't know why he asks that -- and she looks at him sharply.

"Did Pete tell you that?"

"No. But he always does, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. Yes. He does." She bites her lip. "I do too, yeah."

"Okay, cool. Can I sit?" Once she nods, he sits next to her, careful to leave space. "Whatever happened, I'm sorry it sucked for you."

"I'm just oversensitive," she says bitterly. He's pretty sure she's quoting someone.

"Fuck people who tell you what you're supposed to feel," he tells her; same thing he tells Vic when Bob tells her to chill out about the shit people say about her on the internet.

She laughs shortly. "Yeah. Fuck them. That's kind of the problem sometimes."

"Um." Gabe reaches out and touches her shoulder. He feels kind of out of his depth, not sure if she's talking about one of her casual sex affairs gone wrong, or something more awful, the kind of something that doesn't happen to guys like Gabe. Most of the time. 

"Yeah, um." She laughs again.

"Do you need a hug?" he asks helplessly, and suddenly she's in his lap and sobbing and shaking, and all he can do is hold on to her until Pete gets there and squishes her between them.

Pete strokes her hair while she cries into Gabe's neck, his face grim. But his voice is soft and loving when he whispers, "We'll keep you safe, Megs," over and over.

*

Gabe kind of expects sleeping with Meagan to make him think of sleeping with Erin. Sleeping with Erin had definitely made him think of Bianca at first, until they got their own rhythm down. But Meagan is different from both of them; she wears a tank top and panties, and lies flat on her back with a pillow bunched under her head and neck, her arms folded over her ribcage. It stings a little to watch Pete curl into her the way he always curls away from Gabe.

He wonders if it had hurt Erin ever, to see him curled around Pete, when he'd always made her curl into him like Pete is doing with Meagan.

Meagan's asleep in seconds. Pete has his tablet, and offers to prop it somewhere so they can both see, but Gabe shakes his head, shuts his eyes, takes deep, even breaths. He can meditate himself to sleep. He's done it before. That's all meditation is really good for, ultimately.

*

Sometime in the middle of the night, Meagan wakes Gabe up with her shaky breathing. He's totally set to wake up whenever someone's breathing changes into nightmare-breathing; sleeping in the same bunk as Pete every night when they were on tour in 2005 and then again in 2009 attuned him to Pete's shaky breathing from nightmares, and Gabe hasn't lost the skill.

"Megs?" he says in a low voice.

"Sorry," she chokes out. "Nightmare."

"What _happened_?" says Gabe, but it's rhetorical. She shakes her head anyway. "Can I hold you?"

"Y-yeah. Yeah. Don't let me wake up Pete," she answers, and he gathers her into his arms. She's tiny, too. Tinier than Pete in some ways, even though she's taller.

"Whatever's going on, you should let Pete protect you."

"It's nothing. I'm a model, Gabe. Sometimes photographers..." She's clearly trying to hold it together. Gabe pulls her closer and rubs her back. Her breath on his skin is hot where he's cool -- Pete keeps the air on so he can sleep under six hundred blankets. Gabe gropes for another to pull over them; Meagan's skin feels cold too.

"You don't have to work with photographers who do that."

"I do. It's my fucking _job_ ," she snarls.

"Whoa. Hey. I'm not telling you to stop working," he says, still rubbing her back. He feels her relax as she starts to believe him. "Erin had a list of photographers she wouldn't work with. She kept track. Some of the other designers must, too, right?"

"Catalog is different from runway," says Meagan, but she's going lax.

"Well, anything I can do." Even as he says it, she's asleep. He looks over at Pete, a tiny lump under stained white sheets, stained white blankets, his head not even on a pillow. 

His heart hurts. 

*

Pete and Meagan are both gone when Gabe wakes up. He showers, and doesn't know how he feels, except he definitely feels stupid for being a little anxious to go downstairs and see Pete and Meagan. So he has to kick his own ass, put on clothes, and go down. 

Again, Pete isn't there. Meagan looks up from where she's pouring coffee into a mug. "Bronx had playgroup this morning. And Pete was up by, like, four anyway."

"I thought the new cocktail was working." Gabe takes a mug from the cabinet and Meagan holds out the carafe, pours for him while she drinks from her mug. She pours all the way to the top, no room for milk, like she's paid attention to how he takes his coffee at some point.

"It's working. He actually sleeps now, usually for more than a few hours at a time. We went up pretty early for him, too, although he was probably up until at least one watching Netflix or YouTube anyway."

Gabe nods, then sips at his coffee and makes a face, looking away from her. She makes the worst fucking coffee. He looks back when she clears her throat.

"Thanks for letting me be in the middle last night."

"Oh. Um. Yeah, no problem. You okay?"

"Yeah. Just... you know. Whenever that happens, I usually have at least one horrible fucking nightmare." She grimaces. "That's what happened the first night I stayed over, actually."

"Seriously?"

"You've never heard about this?" Gabe shakes his head. Meagan looks surprised. "I didn't think Pete was going to want to keep seeing me, honestly, he seemed sort of bored whenever we were together. But we were having pretty good sex and I was someone to watch cartoons with, I guess. And then I had this screaming nightmare and woke him up -- it was worse that night because we'd had sex, you know? So I was..." She rolls one wrist. "Worse."

Gabe nods silently.

"And it was like a switch. He started taking me more seriously."

"Because suddenly you weren't perfect anymore."

"I was never perfect."

"But you seemed perfect. And he's all, like, I don't know, he's the metaphor guy. Broken mirror, cracks spidering everywhere, new face of failure, whatever."

She shakes her head, but then says, "I guess."

"You've seen him. He thinks people are perfect and then one imperfection, one fuck up, it's the worst betrayal. You have to have seen him do that."

"I haven't. He surrounds himself with people who are so real and so..." She shrugs. 

"I guess I'm thinking of, like, the way things used to be. I mean, how he used to think of himself as awful and everyone else as great, and the moment someone else was awful, then they were like him, you know? And it meant he wasn't alone, but it also meant that either they had to be awful, too, or he had to be great. And since he couldn't be great..."

"I understand. I know what you mean. But I don't think he's like that anymore? Like, I really seriously don't think he's like that. He sees more shades of grey now."

"He always saw shades of grey."

"He can _accept_ more grey now," she says, and bites her lip. "Does that make sense? He accepts that people aren't all one thing or the other."

"That's all Bronx -- he's not totally a brat, he's not totally an angel, and Pete had to learn how to love him all the time. I mean, not that Pete didn't love Bronx from the moment he was born. It was just that there were parts of being a dad that didn't come as easily, and --"

"I know what you meant." She smiles at him a little tentatively. "Anyway, I know he'd totally say no, but he likes that I have nightmares. He likes that we have that in common."

"It's comforting, probably."

"Maybe. I don't always try to understand or explain stuff about him to myself, you know? Because I don't want to build anything up around him. I just want to let him be who he is. He lets me be who I am. The less I try to make things fit together, the better it feels to _be_ together."

It's Gabe's turn to shrug. "I like stuff to make sense. Have explanations."

"He loves you. Doesn't that make everything make sense?"

"Not really."

"Then you must not believe him. If you believed him, it would make sense."

Gabe leans against the kitchen island and sips the coffee. It's really fucking bad coffee. "How does that work?"

"I guess I don't understand what doesn't make sense."

"I just mean, like..." Gabe takes another sip of bad coffee. "There's a lot happening and we haven't really talked about any of it. I don't want to fuck up. I don't want to fuck up me and Pete's friendship. I don't want to fuck him up."

"You won't fuck him up if you love him," she says assuredly, and Gabe thinks, uncharitably, _You're so fucking young._

Out loud he just says, "I hope you're right."

*

Before she leaves for a meeting with her agent, she says, "Don't clean the spare room down here. Pete's keeping his notebooks in there."

"Got it. But I can clean the kitchen?" He grins at her.

"Please do."

She turns to leave, and he has no idea why he does it. Or maybe he does know. He would know, if he thought about it. But he doesn't want to think about it. His hand tightens on her arm and he leans in.

"Thanks, Meggy," he says softly, and kisses her cheek.

Meagan stands completely still, her eyelashes long and sweeping when she looks down.

"Don't thank me for anything yet," she finally says, and presses a kiss to his cheek before she tugs away and leaves.

*

Gabe wishes he knew what he was doing. God damn.

*

He gets a text from Vic. All caps: BRING BACK MY CAR ASSHOLE

*

"You'll have to drive me back to Pete's," he says, flopping on her couch.

"I've been wondering why you haven't posted any obnoxious selfies of yourself in a bathing suit," she says, and smirks. She hands him a glass full of something orange. He sips. No alcohol, just sweet, cold juice with a weird tang.

"You have not. You knew I was with Pete."

"True. You tried to feed me vegan cheese. I should tell everyone in the world you're staying with Pete. People will send you so much fan fiction on Twitter."

"That would just be cruel. And you shouldn't have had vegan cheese in your fridge if you didn't want to eat it."

"It's Ryan's. He feeds it to his cat."

Gabe makes a face. That's just weird. Vic shrugs and perches on the arm of the couch.

"How's Pete?"

"He's... Pete."

She frowns at him. "Fine. Do you want to watch _Gossip Girl_ from the beginning?"

"Not without alcohol."

"We can take a shot every time they fuck up something from the books."

"I never read the books!" Gabe protests loudly, as Vic gets up.

"Pull the other one, Saporta." She snorts as she disappears into the kitchen. 

Gabe pulls out his phone and checks his email (three forwards from his dad, a new Ivy League song from Ry and Alex, a bunch of shit he doesn't care about) and then Twitter (nothing interesting) and then Tumblr (a lot of otters from Pete lately). He has a couple of texts -- Ryan Ross, that freak. And Meagan.

He opens the one from Meagan.

_Pete's talking about a threesome, thinks he's being subtle. FYI. Heads up. Whatever. I'm okay with it if you are. Don't try to fuck me in the ass._

Gabe swallows hard, manages to type out, _No prob_ as Victoria comes back into the room. 

"All I could find was warm vodka," she announces; her glass is half full of juice; she fills the other half with vodka, hands him the bottle, picks up the remote. "You're lucky Mike is gone this week so I have booze."

Gabe looks at his glass, at the bottle, at her. He swigs the vodka straight from the bottle and says, "I'm sleeping with Pete."

She mutes the tv. "I fucking knew it. Tell me everything."

*

He doesn't tell her everything, but they do get drunk. He picks up a guitar for the first time in six months. The song he writes is fucking awful, but it's a song. He's not sure exactly what's happening in his brain, what with all the alcohol, so it's either about the punk movement or about getting Pete pregnant. He'll probably never be able to figure out which.

*

When Gabe wakes up in the morning, he aches everywhere. He's too old to be sleeping sprawled out on the floor, no matter how cushy the rug. Giz is licking his face while Louie licks his hand. When he checks his phone, there are a bunch of embarrassing texts, half incomprehensible from drunkenness and half incomprehensible from autocorrect. 

And his Twitter app crashes the first two times he tries to load it, which cannot possibly be good.

He finally gets it to load and sees that at eight p.m. the night before -- right around the time, if Gabe remembers correctly, Vic called for liquor delivery because they'd drank everything in her house, including the fucking _Tia Maria_ \-- he Tweeted at Pete.

_@petewentz love u._

According to his text messages' timestamps, that was right between "And NH e went don't u sweet me" and "o love u lovE U FOREVER HADN'T OUR MEANT OUR". How Gabe managed to get Pete's fucking Twitter name right, he has no clue.

His @replies are a fucking mess -- Victoria will _never_ let him live this down -- so he clicks over to Pete's Twitter page to see if maybe Pete actually replied.

There it is.

 _@gabrielsaporta Love you too drunky. See you tomorrow. Dont drink and drive._

And then a bunch of incomprehensible emoji.

Gabe's head hurts. And he's old. And he slept on the floor and woke up to dog tongue in his mouth. He thinks he should be forgiven for not figuring out right away that the emoji thing is holding its heart in its little emoji hands.

*

Victoria does drop him off at Pete's that night, because she's a goddess. ("If he still lived someplace with a fence and a guard, you'd be on your own," she says, but he doesn't believe her.) Gabe stumbles into the house and can hear them in the backyard -- Bronx is shrieking and it goes right through Gabe's head, then through his body, stopping in his stomach to fuck with him. He bypasses them entirely, drinks water right from the faucet, and collapses onto the bed. He's lucid enough to untie his shoes and take them off -- and lucid enough to realize he's going to sweat all the alcohol onto the sheets, but they need to be changed anyway -- and then he passes out.

The bed moving wakes him up. He blinks a couple of times to clear his vision, expecting Meagan and Pete to be coming to sleep, but they're not. They're fucking. Meagan is riding Pete, her body literally actually glistening with sweat in the moonlight streaming in. They're all greys and shadows and Gabe can't catch his breath.

Then he realizes Meagan is talking.

"...how small I am?" she says. "And you're smaller than me." Her hips grind down. "So tiny, so small, look how small you are next to Gabe and me. We're so big and you're so fucking tiny, Pete, so --" She chokes. Pete's hand is between them, making her hips stutter, fucking up her rhythm. Pete's hips are moving too, feet braced on the bed as he fucks up into her, staring up at her.

"Come on, come on, come on," chants Pete under his breath. "Come on," and Meagan does, falling forward over him, her hair everywhere. Gabe doesn't get to watch Pete's face as he comes, but he focuses on the noises their bodies make when his dick slams up into her, the way they fuck hard enough to move the bed away from the wall and scrape the floor. Pete's deep groan.

Gabe's hard, but his head still hurts, and he thinks coming would make it worse instead of better. And he has to piss. And he's _confused_.

Meagan rolls off Pete, between him and Gabe. "Oof," she says, and yawns. "Oh my god, I could come again. Like five times."

"Gabe's awake," says Pete, propping up on an elbow. Gabe's eyes go to his face. Pete's staring at him. "Wanna go down on her?"

"You're not wearing a condom," says Gabe blankly.

"Mmm," says Meagan. Gabe watches her slide her fingers down, inside, then pull them out and lick them. 

"Pineapple juice," says Pete smugly.

She dips her fingers in again and offers them to Gabe, who opens his mouth automatically, and moans when he tastes bitter-tangy-salt-bland.

"Want it?" she asks softly.

"My head hurts," he whines, and her face shutters. "No, seriously, I still have a hangover. I won't be any good.

Pete's fingers slide between Meagan's legs, and her face relaxes. She sighs.

"How much did you _drink_?" Pete asks while Meagan writhes between them.

"Too much. I'm too fucking old."

"You could have been home fucking me all night."

"Instead I sent you a lot of embarrassing texts."

"I liked them." Pete leans down and sucks one of Meagan's nipples into his mouth, and she gasps.

"He did," she says breathlessly. "He went down on me forever."

"Tomorrow after coffee, I'll go down on you too."

"Well, fair is f-f-fair." Her back arches up off the bed. When she comes back down, she sighs, lifts up her head, pulls all her hair back and twists it. Then she looks away from Gabe, at Pete, who's still sucking on her nipple. "Go down on me now, Pete."

He does, spreading her wide with his shoulders. Gabe pulls a pillow under his head and lifts one of her legs over his hips. He rolls his head to hers, presses their foreheads together and drinks her gasps and moans while they kiss.

His head doesn't hurt _that_ bad.

*

Gabe has a million texts and emails and shit, but the important ones are:

1\. A text that Audrey can say "Unca Gabe silly!" Thanks, Ricky.

2\. An email that Papi got a Facebook and wants Gabe to get one too so they can be friends and Gabe can be tagged in the pictures Papi posts to the picture net. That one must also be Ricky's fault. 

3\. A text from a number Gabe doesn't recognize that Meagan says is Nadine's. All it says is DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE COME OUT ON TWITTER, SAPORTA. I'LL KILL YOU. He's met Nadine once or twice. She's not scary. When he says that to Meagan, though, Meagan laughs at him.

4\. An email from Trav. "guess the whole interwebz knows ur bonin now bruv." Great. Thanks. That's helpful.

*

Pete makes French toast for breakfast. Bronx makes a huge mess. Meagan makes terrible coffee. Gabe makes faces at Bronx behind Pete's back and wishes Pete had a juicer. Bronx is distracted for a few minutes eating his French toast with strawberries -- French toast apparently _does_ get fruit -- and Gabe orders the most expensive juicer he can find on Amazon. 

He's never kicked the "more expensive is more better" mindset he picked up during childhood. He also keeps money he doesn't genuinely need in his checking account just so he can load his Chase app and stare at the balance. He's Gabe fucking Saporta. He can do that.

After Pete and Bronx leave to drop Bronx at playgroup -- which Gabe has figured out is Pete's way of not letting Bronx know he goes to some kind of daycare-slash-nursery school -- Gabe drains his coffee and stares at Meagan until she looks up at him.

"So. Megs. Wanna sit on my face?"

"Does that line ever work? Like, has it ever worked in your whole life?"

"Um... once, maybe? Twice if you're into it."

She grins at him. "I'm into it. But Pete's going to come home and want to eat his weight in French toast."

"Once now, break for more French toast, again later," offers Gabe. "We can take pictures for Pete so he doesn't feel left out."

Meagan puts Bronx's plate in the sink and runs water over it, runs water into her coffee cup. Then she comes and leans against the table next to Gabe. "Convince me," she says, pushes his plate out of the way, and hops up on the table, one long, gorgeous, stubbly leg on either side of his hips. She spreads her knees. 

"Holy shit," breathes Gabe. "You're prepared."

She's not wearing underwear. Her cunt is gorgeous and shiny-wet. Gabe takes a deep breath. She smells different than last night -- she'd showered this morning, but she's also missing bitter-tangy. She's missing Pete's come inside her.

"I wasn't a Girl Scout or anything." She leans back on her hands and tilts her hips up. "I just like oral a lot."

"Who doesn't." He kisses the inside of her knee, up her thigh. She buries a hand in his hair, then jerks his head up so he's looking at her face instead of her bare pussy. "Don't tease. Just lick me, make me come, then fingers inside and I'll come again."

"That easy?"

"You think it'll be easy?" Her face is serious but her voice is teasing. "If you make me come twice before Pete gets home, you'll get a prize."

"Will that prize involve an orgasm?"

"I guess you'll have to wait and see." She bites her lip. "Um. This is okay, right? I said at first I thought we shouldn't do this, and then I don't think I asked."

"You kind of did." Gabe kisses her knee again, letting the fingers she has twisted in his hair pull a little too hard to be sexy. "But I'd've said no for real last night if I didn't want to. I want to. You're really hot."

"And you like me, right?"

"And I like you," agrees Gabe. "I think you're cool _and_ I like how you are with Pete."

One corner of her mouth lifts. "And I have nightmares."

"And you have nightmares. Can I eat you out now?" He doesn't wait for her to answer, just dives in. She smells so good, fresh and clean and sweaty and turned on, and tastes even better than the French toast, definitely better than coffee, better than it felt to stand under the shower this morning. She gets wet all over his face, is so fucking loud, and rubs one of her feet on his thigh. He can feel her toes digging in and wishes he wasn't wearing jeans.

He misses her first orgasm, and she has to tug his hair and tell him, "Fingers now, now, come on," and then tell him, "Two, god, Gabe, please," and then tell him exactly how to fingerbang her. She's so fucking bossy, but not like he's doing it _wrong_ \-- bossy like she trusts him to do exactly what she wants and get it exactly right.

Gabe might come in his pants.

She comes a second time, clamping down hard on his fingers, almost pushing him out of her body, and falls back on the table. Gabe is pretty sure her hair is in a plate of syrup.

"Fuck," she pants. "That's good."

He rubs his face against her thigh. He's all stubbly, she's all stubbly. He likes it. "What do I get?" he asks.

"Nothing, baby, Pete's been watching almost since you started."

"Please," whines Gabe, "oh my god, Megs."

Meagan pushes herself up on her elbows and meets his gaze. "You like my toes, right?"

Gabe flushes.

"He _loves_ toes," says Pete. He comes to the table and boosts himself up to sit next to Meagan, kicks off his crappy WalMart flip-flops. "Mine are dirty, though." He puts one foot on Gabe's thigh.

"Fuck, your feet _are_ dirty," says Gabe, startled out of the moment. "How did you get them so dirty in the last half-hour?"

"Driving barefoot," says Pete cheerfully. "Let Meagan rub your dick with her toes."

Meagan puts her foot over Gabe's crotch, pressing the fly of his jeans into his hard dick. "Yeah?" she says, raising her eyebrows.

"You said I only got something if I got you off before Pete got home." Gabe's blushing 100% now, he can _feel it_ , his face all hot and tight.

Meagan looks at him speculatively. He can't even glance at Pete.

"I guess that means you don't get off. You have to hold it until I say," she tells him, and pushes her foot harder. He groans and pants and feels so fucking out of control. "No coming. No fucking. No jerking off. Not until I say."

"I promise," he pants, his hips rocking against her foot.

"Toes, toes, toes," whispers Pete. "My toes fit in your mouth."

"He sucked on your toes?" Meagan rolls her foot against Gabe's dick, then rubs it up and down. "I'd watch that."

"He likes how tiny my feet are."

"Come on, he likes how tiny your _everything_ is. Tiny little feet. Tiny little hands. Tiny little dick."

Gabe watches them make out on the table, his hips rocking into Meagan's foot, and tries not to whimper. He's not quite successful, he can't quite sit still, he's burning up.

And then they stop, and Meagan is rinsing syrup out of her hair and Pete's making more French toast, and no one is touching Gabe.

*

Gabe has known Pete for a really fucking long time at this point and is _still_ surprised by the amount of French toast Pete can put away. He eats almost an entire stick of butter smeared on, and half a jug of fake maple syrup. Bronx got the real shit, imported from Canada and heated up. Pete gets cold Aunt Jemima.

"I really love you," says Gabe, watching him eat and post ridiculous shit to Twitter at the same time.

Pete looks up, beaming. "I really love you, too."

*

Forty-five minutes later, Pete does not love anyone. He's lying on the couch, groaning and clutching his stomach. 

"Did I eat an entire loaf of bread?" he asks.

Meagan sighs. "I'm not your mom," she says, like this is a conversation they've had a million times. It probably is. "I'm not going to tell you when to stop eating."

"It's just so delicious," he moans. "But now it hurts. Why? Why does it hurt me?"

"Your belly is poking out a little," says Gabe. He's sitting on the floor, petting Bear to distract himself from how he knows Meagan isn't wearing panties. He twists to look at Pete. "Look. Seriously."

Pete rubs his hands over his belly. "I'm pregnant," he says, rubbing. Meagan starts giggling.

"French toast baby," she says through her giggles. 

"How will I give birth?" he asks. Then he gasps theatrically. "Oh my god, it will come out my ass!"

Meagan crawls onto the couch between Pete's legs and pushes up his shirt. "Hello, French toast baby," she croons to his belly, and kisses it, and suddenly Gabe feels uncomfortable, like he shouldn't be watching.

"You wanna make a baby with me?" Pete murmurs. He's still rubbing his belly and now Meagan is too.

"I wanna get you pregnant," she says, and kisses his belly again. "Let me put a baby in you."

Gabe's head feels loud and fuzzy. Pete's probably going to get Meagan pregnant. They'll get married and have kids and there won't be room in that life for weird Uncle Gabe.

He stumbles to his feet, catching himself on the couch. Bear yips at him sadly, and that's what makes Pete and Meagan both look at him.

"I need to -- um. My phone. Call," he says. Very smooth. But he's going to puke.

Where did he think this was going? How did he think this was going to end? He's not moving to LA. Pete's not moving to New York. He can't bring Pete and Bronx _and_ Meagan home for Pesach, can't go with them to Pete's parents' for Christmas.

He's out the front door before he remembers he doesn't have a car anymore because Vic took it back, and he's not wearing socks with his sneakers, and he actually left his phone on the kitchen table.

Fuck everything.

*

It's Meagan who comes for him. Gabe figured it would be. He's sitting across the street from the house, between two cars, under a tree. He's thirsty and upset and getting a headache. He can't figure out how this is ever going to work and he _knows_ he's trapped in some kind of weird anxiety loop -- the kind Pete is always trapped in. But he can't bust out of it, can't find the hole in his logic.

Meagan holds out one of her hands and he takes it, lets her pull him to his feet. She hands him the bottle of water she's carrying. It's already sweating condensation in the heat.

"Pete's watching from the front window," she says. "He's worried."

"I think I'm having a panic attack."

"Nope. Not clinically. But..." She pulls a cake pop out of the waistband of her skirt. "Want to eat this before we go back in and have a conversation?"

"I hate being an adult," says Gabe, but he takes the cake pop.

"It's red velvet." She makes a face. "Sorry."

"I don't care," he says, and eats the whole thing in one bite. The wrapper says it's Acapulco Gold, Pete's strain of choice for calming down during the day. Gabe kind of misses smoking, but smoking doesn't calm him down, anyway, and Pete always had to smoke so much to calm down, it had been sort of ridiculous. 

He leans on a car, smoothing the wrapper between his fingertips, sipping the water and waiting. Waiting. Meagan waits with him, leaning on the other car, arms folded over her chest. When his chest starts to feel warm and he can take a deep breath, he nods. 

"Sorry," he says.

"We don't do that, actually. It took a while to figure out, but." She shrugs. "We aren't sorry for anxiety in this house."

"We're not in the house," Gabe snaps, then winces. Meagan stays calm, though.

"You need to wait a couple more minutes?"

Gabe takes another deep breath. His joints all feel warm now. He can smell the outdoors, the burning hot sun on the road, the chlorine of someone's pool.

"No, I'm good. Sorry."

"Mmm." She holds out a hand and he takes it, lets her lead him back to the house. He tucks the Red Velvet Acapulco Gold wrapper into his pocket. Maybe he _will_ move to LA, if it means a medical card. That would be bad for his whole mostly-in-recovery thing, even though he's mostly in recovery from pills. And he hates what he feels like in LA. Pete's house isn't _real_ LA. It's an oasis.

"That's how I feel too," says Meagan when he says that to her, and opens the door.

"Sorry," Gabe says to Pete, who's standing uneasily by the front window, Bear at his feet. "I didn't mean to flip out."

"You didn't really flip out," says Pete, and Meagan makes a tiny noise in her throat. "I mean, um, it's okay to feel anxious and have to take some time to deal with that as long as no one is being hurt."

"Did I hurt you?"

"No, that's my therapy script."

Gabe wants to smile at him, but isn't sure he can get his mouth to work right, so he squeezes Meagan's hand instead. She squeezes back.

"I'm glad I didn't hurt you. I just needed. Um. To think."

"Do you want to make a list?" offers Pete. "We can, you know, do what you do with me." Pete's actually looking at Meagan, and literally wringing his hands. "Talk about each thing and how to deal with it."

"Mostly I was just thinking about how it's going to feel when this is over."

"Y-you're leaving?"

"No, I was thinking about when you leave me?" Gabe doesn't mean to make that a question, it just happens.

"I'm not leaving you?" Pete makes his a question too.

"Not _now_. But some day. And coming out and telling people and our parents and Meggy's parents and..." Gabe rolls his eyes. "I know, it's all stuff we're never going to do, and, like, I guess I was freaking out about _that_ , you know?"

Pete frowns at him. "No, I don't know. What the fuck?"

"Come on, Pete. You're going to come out in two weeks and be like, by the way, this is my band's second major arena tour on this number one album and also even though I said I was straight for years and years and said that kissing boys was a phase and totally denied kissing Gabe ever, we're gay for each other. Or bisexual for each other. Whatever. Oh, yeah, and also I'm not monogamous. Now, let's talk about the music."

"Well, no, but that doesn't mean I'm -- wait, I never denied kissing you!"

"You told _OUT_ that you hadn't kissed a dude since you were, like, twenty! You kissed me in 2005!"

"Oh my god, you're still not over that?"

"You basically said I didn't mean anything to you! In print!"

"And you _called them_ and they wrote a whole fucking blog post about how you called and said we'd kissed and by the way? Ashlee kicked my ass for that, I slept on the couch for _weeks_ , and Joe fucking _tortured me_ and --"

"And you think it'll be better this time around because there are more lawyers involved?" snaps Gabe. He drops Meagan's hand and presses both his hands to his eyes. "Shit. Shit."

"Wow, there are a lot of feelings happening here right now," observes Meagan. "Maybe we need brownies for this."

"Maybe we need Gabe not to be a fucking asshole."

"Maybe we need Pete to _think_ for one second about what this means for _my life_. His life. Bronx's life. I'm supposed to show up alone for Rosh Hashanah every year and lie to Papi? To Ricky? Or find someone else to be in love with like you have Meagan?"

"Okay, stop. I'm not Ashlee, so I'm not going to stop Pete from going to your family for holidays, and you're about to say some shit you'll probably regret," says Meagan. "And I'm also not a goddamn referee. You two need to work this shit out without me moderating."

"You don't need to moderate. Just -- get us brownies? We'll sit right here and deal with this," says Pete. He doesn't sound upset, just tired and sad.

Well, Gabe is sad, too, so it's only fair.

Except Gabe never wants Pete to be sad. Ever.

Fuck.

*

It takes two brownies apiece, sitting at the kitchen table. Gabe keeps remembering what was happening just three hours ago. 

Pete eats steadily, like it's work, and at one point looks like he's going to puke. He catches Gabe's eye and shrugs. "I don't have anything to smoke in the house," he explains. 

"Really?"

"Smoking is recreation. This is medicine." 

That sounds like another therapy script. Gabe nods.

"It's just easier if I keep it separate," Pete adds. "For my brain. To process this as medicine."

"I get it," says Gabe. He does. Sort of.

Pete finishes the brownie, frowning the whole time. "So, um. First? I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings when I did that interview and said being bisexual was just a phase for me." Rehearsed, but he means it, Gabe knows. He wouldn't bother to rehearse something he didn't care about. "At the time, I was just trying to make my life easier. I know it sounds bad, but I wasn't thinking about anything but how Bronx was going to be born in a few months and Ashlee's whole family hated me for being a fag."

"I get it." Gabe feels as tired as Pete sounds. The brownies make everything feel heavy and slow instead of warm. Gabe prefers the cake pops. "I do. I'm sorry I threw it in your face. And... I'm sorry I fucked it up."

"You were going through your own shit back then."

"Yeah. Still."

"I'm gonna say something else you're not going to like."

"Just do it." This day can't really get too much worse. Gabe will call a taxi, remember to take his phone, just leave. Pete's cleaning service can throw out all Gabe's stuff.

"I wasn't even thinking about all that stuff you mentioned, because I didn't realize you were thinking about it. I figured you were here, we were fucking around, you'd go back to New York, and everything would be the same as always."

"You thought I was having threesomes with you and your girlfriend and then I'd just leave and it would end?" That isn't what Gabe was expecting to hear, actually. This hurts more. "What kind of person do you think I _am_?"

"The kind of person who was basically left at the altar six months ago."

"We didn't make it to the altar," says Gabe automatically. He can't look at Pete's face, just his fingers. _Tiny little fingers_ , he thinks. Pete is so inside his head. His heart. His everything. Fuck.

"Right. And I've been... been flirting," says Pete carefully, "for years. Now you decide you're interested?"

"Travie knocked some sense into me," says Gabe numbly. "He made me realize. I felt so stupid. And now -- now I feel stupider. Wow. I'm an idiot."

"It's just nothing else changed? And, like, you specifically said you didn't want anything to change except for sex?" Pete's fingers tap on the table. "So, like --"

"Right. Pete." Gabe looks up at him. He hates to think of what Pete can see on his face. "Nothing changed. Because there was nothing to change except... except what I thought was going on."

"I... really?"

"Really what?"

"Really you're in love with me? Is that what you're saying?" Pete sounds cautious, but his eyes are so bright. 

"I've been saying I love you this whole time."

"Right, but years you've been saying you love me. And now it's -- it's in-love love?"

"It's always been in-love love. I just wouldn't admit it. And now I'm admitting it, okay?" says Gabe softly. "I'm in love with you. I love you. And do you know what that's going to do to me when you marry Meagan and have kids and I get pushed aside?" He shakes his head.

Pete stares at him. "Um. I can't have kids."

"Whose is Bronx, then?" demands Gabe.

"Well, he's mine, but..." Pete mimes scissors. "No more kids."

"What? You never told me that."

"I didn't tell anyone. I mean, I told Megs. But, like, I didn't even tell Ashlee. I had it done while she was out of town. It's not... I said I didn't want more kids from my body. I said it over and over. No one believed me. But Bronx was a fucking accident -- not my accident, you know? And that can't happen again."

Gabe feels bowled over. "Wow. Um."

"I know I'm a good dad. I like being a dad. I might even think about adopting someday, I don't know. But..."

"I need a minute."

"I love Megs. And I love you. And, like, I guess I don't really get what you're worried about exactly, because you're all, like, talking about my parents, but they love you. And your dad... I mean, I think he's great, even though I never exactly make the best impression on him. I'm not really ready to talk about my, um, sexuality? In public? Like, at all. But we went on all those joke dates and no one really cared, so I don't get why we can't just do that."

"Because it's not a joke," says Gabe quietly. He folds one of the brownie wrappers over and over and over. "It's real and serious. It's not a joke."

"I meant... I don't know what I meant."

"You're in love with me?" asks Gabe. "Could you say that and mean it?"

"I said it!"

"You did not!"

"I did!"

"Say it again, then."

"I'm in love with you. I'm totally in love with you. I'm in love with you in a way that makes me feel like we can work this out if we want to."

"But you didn't think I was in love with you."

"Gabe. I didn't realize what was going on. Now I do."

"So you've been in love with me this whole time and you knew you were?"

"Not exactly," hedges Pete. "Maybe a couple of years?"

"How many is a couple?"

"Usually two? But in this case more like, I don't know, um. Four?"

"You were married four years ago."

"And every time I looked at you holding Bronx, I wished I was married to you. That was the first clue. Also jerking off to Midtown liner notes when I was twenty-three."

"You never."

"I totally did. Ask Patrick."

"I will not."

"Your loss," smirks Pete, and Gabe grins at him.

"Look at your tiny little mouth," he says, and feels so much lighter.

"My mouth is _so_ tiny," says Pete, and then he starts to giggle. 

Gabe kind of wishes he could take a picture and post it to Instagram and be like, I'm in love with this guy and we're going to make some kind of life together. That would be terrible, though. Gabe is still kind of skeptical that Nadine would kill him, but Meagan might.

"Hey," Gabe says. He kicks Pete under the table. "Hey."

"Hey," says Pete through his giggles. Maybe they overdid it on the brownies.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"I bet I can get you pregnant tonight." Gabe licks his lips. "If we try really hard. And Meagan helps."

"Gonna put a baby in me? It had better have your ears."

"The Saporta ears breed true, I promise." Gabe tugs on one ear. "I'm hoping for the Wentz chin."

"That also breeds true." Pete rubs his chin. "If I come over there, will you kiss me?"

Gabe pushes back from the table. Instead of standing up and walking around, Pete just scrambles across the tabletop and into Gabe's arms.

*

Getting Pete pregnant is really intense. Gabe has no idea how Meagan and Pete came up with this game. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing Pete would ever admit, and even though Meagan is really in tune with Pete, how is this something she could just _guess_ he wanted?

She kisses his neck and touches his belly and whispers to him. Gabe watches from the bathroom doorway holding a damp washcloth. He was going to wipe Pete down, get everyone clean, but Meagan isn't waiting. She has her hand over his briefs, using her palm to rub at his dick. She clearly has a _method_ \-- Gabe is fascinated by the way she twists her wrist to make it seem like her arm isn't moving. 

To make it seem like Pete's dick is tiny.

"You're so pretty," she croons. "I can't wait to get inside you, fill you up."

"Fill me up," pants Pete, his hips thrusting up. "Fill me up, please, I want a baby."

"Are you wet yet? I want you to be dripping wet for me, make it easy to get inside you even though you're so small."

Meagan has a pump bottle of lube, and she squirts some out. 

Gabe can't hear the pump move over Pete's cries. He tucks his hand into his boxer briefs, starts stroking his dick. There is nothing so hot in the whole world as what's happening in front of him. And this is something they've done _a lot_ , Gabe thinks; they have a routine. 

Meagan's fingers crawl under the side of Pete's briefs, down between his legs.

"So wet," she breathes. "So wet, such a tiny little hole. Do you think we could fit Gabe's dick into that tiny hole? Make you a baby with Gabe?"

"I do, I do, please, I --" Pete's word cut off on a little choked-off cry. Her fingers inside, Gabe figures. 

He wants to walk over and get involved, touch Pete -- touch Meagan -- but he also wants to just stand there and watch them together, both of them gorgeous, with gleaming brown skin and shiny hair and big eyes, both of them bright against the sheets.

"Gabe's dick is going to be so big inside you," murmurs Meagan. "Gonna split you open, make you sob, Gabe's going to fuck you pregnant, put a giant baby in you." Her arm twists and Pete cries out again. Gabe pushes down his boxer briefs and drops the damp washcloth before he crawls onto the bed. Fuck it. 

*

"Do you think I'm pregnant?" asks Pete softly. His head is on Gabe's chest, one leg sprawled over both of Gabe's so Gabe can rub his hole -- wet and swollen. _Used_.

Meagan's ear is against his belly. "If you were, do you think I'd be able to hear the cells splitting?" she asks. She sits up a little, kisses Gabe's wrist, then sits all the way up, tossing her hair back. "It would be, like, the size of an atom right now, right?"

"Big bang." Pete shivers when Gabe's thumb catches on the rim. "Universe exploding inside me."

"If this didn't work, we'll just keep trying," says Gabe. He strokes around Pete's hole carefully. When he looks up from the top of Pete's head, Meagan is beaming at him. He smiles back, blows her a kiss. She leans over Pete to kiss him for real, biting at his mouth. 

"Maybe we'll get you pregnant sometime," she says speculatively, eyeing Gabe as she sits back.

There's a little twist in Gabe's stomach at her words. "No," he says hoarsely. He clears his throat. "I think... I don't think I can do that."

"Why not? Real men don't get fucked?" Her attitude changes so fast -- she sneers, her voice is sharp.

Gabe clears his throat again. "No, um. I just. I want babies? Like, really badly? And if I was a girl, I'd have, like, I don't know, six hundred kids already. So, like, pretending would hurt too much? You know?"

And she's back to being sensitive, understanding, caring Meagan. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"Gabe's going to be a great dad," says Pete sleepily. "Turn off the lights?"

Gabe's only too happy to abandon the conversation to cuddle Pete in the middle. He kind of wishes he had the damp washcloth _now_ , because his dick is covered in lube and come and... like... stuff. But whatever, it's okay, he'd rather lie here with Pete and Meagan, and he'll just change the sheets again tomorrow.

*

Pete has to give Bronx a bath -- attack of the French toast redux, this time with angry syrup-throwing because there weren't any strawberries left, and blueberries aren't acceptable. Syrup is everywhere, including the wall where Pete had turned Bronx for time-out. Bronx drew on the wall in syrup -- frowny faces. With hair that sticks up, so they must be Pete-faces, not Bronx-faces.

Gabe is pretty good at distinguishing Bronx's stick figures by their hair now. A stick figure of Bronx gets curly hair. Meagan gets long hair. Gabe usually gets a weird hi-top fade, like the dudes from Kid 'n Play, and he's always about three times as tall as anyone else on the page. 

There's a picture of "Uncle Travie" on the side of the fridge, his name carefully lettered and then colored in messily. It runs the entire length of the fridge, top to bottom, and makes Gabe smile every time he sees it.

Except when he's scrubbing syrup off the fucking walls. Fuck, Bronx.

"You can leave that for the cleaning service." Meagan leans against the fridge, carefully avoiding the picture of Travie.

"We'll get ants."

She shrugs. "We have traps."

"It's disgusting." He scrubs harder, even though the syrup is really mostly gone.

"Since you're already cleaning, can I ask you something?"

Gabe stops scrubbing to look at her. She's probably one of the most beautiful people he's ever seen. He has a knack for meeting gorgeous people, somehow. His whole life is full of them. It's enough to give a normal-looking guy with big ears a complex.

"Shoot," he finally says.

"Are you really okay with this?"

"Okay with..."

"Come on. You and Pete had it out yesterday. I don't do that -- I don't like that kind of fight. I had to learn how to, like, talk calmly, otherwise I flip out. Worse than Pete. So talk calmly with me."

"I don't know what you want me to say, though." Gabe turns back to scrubbing the wall. The place where the syrup was is now a different color than the rest of the wall. What if the whole wall is dirty? Gabe is going to fire Pete's cleaning service.

"Here." Meagan puts down a red plastic bucket full of soapy water. "Now you don't have to keep going back to the sink."

"I need bleach."

"It's in there. I promise. Diluted."

Gabe lets out a long breath. "You're great."

"Is that what you think I want you to say?"

"I don't _know_ what you want me to say. I just think you're great. I'm not good at these conversations."

"Is that why Erin left?"

Gabe goes totally still; his heart stops for a moment. Then he takes a deep breath. "There were a lot of reasons. But mostly Erin left because she didn't realize I was serious about having six hundred kids."

"Six hundred."

"I would have settled for three or four. I wanted to... I mean, I still want to. Like I said last night. Have kids. Stay home with them. Retire from music."

"She didn't want kids?"

"I guess not. I thought I'd been really up-front about it, but." He swishes the rag in the bucket. He can smell the bleach now.

"Pete wants a million kids, too."

"Not you?"

He sees her shrug out of the corner of her eye. "I don't mind being around kids. I don't want to, like, birth them. Or be a _mom_. I love Bronx, but I don't want to be his _mom_."

"I don't get that. All I ever wanted was to be a dad. More than I even wanted music."

"Really? Because you could have just adopted."

It's Gabe's turn to shrug. "It never felt like the right time."

"You and Pete can adopt. When he's ready to come out."

"You won't feel... excluded?"

She doesn't answer. Instead, she says, "You're not poly. Pete talked about it a lot when we first got together for real, that you're not poly and he didn't have a shot with you and was it going to bother me the way it bothered Ashlee. But now you're poly and you're together. I don't get that."

"I'm not poly. Polyamorous? I'm not."

"But you're not monogamous, because you're kind of fucking us both."

"I know, but it's..."

"It's like you're not gay, you're just gay for Pete?"

"I'm bi."

"I meant, like, you're not poly but you'll do anything you have to in order to have him?"

Gabe drops the rag into the bucket. He doesn't want to sit on the floor now that he knows the cleaning service sucks and there are ants, so he bends over and breathes in the bleach fumes until his nose and throat burn.

"I guess," he says slowly, "that if I asked Pete to break up with you and just be with me, he would." Meagan makes a little noise. "But, like, you make him really happy. You're happy together. And it never actually occurred to me that I should ask him to break up with you, because I like seeing him happy so much."

"He's happy with you too," she says in a tiny voice.

"But it's not exactly the same, is it? And when he's with both of us, he's, like, quadruple happy. Like we all play off each other in the right ways to... work."

"You're happy with me?"

"Well, so what? You're happy with me too."

"I'm not being an asshole. I didn't realize."

"I like you. I don't know if I'm ever going to fall in love with you, but do I have to?" Gabe picks up the bucket and sighs. "I want to scrub the floor."

"Didn't you scrub the floor the other day?"

"No, I got distracted by re-organizing the spice cabinet."

"I'm probably not going to fall in love with you either. But I might love you."

"Love and sex mixed together don't automatically mean falling in love for you?" He doesn't mean to sound so surprised, or so skeptical.

"Are you asking that because I'm a girl?" She frowns at him.

"Megs! No. I'm asking because that's how it works for me." He pours the bucket down the sink. It's full of dishes, because they just use dishes until the cleaning service does them once a week. So unacceptable. Gabe will need to teach Bronx how to load the dishwasher.

"So you won't ever love me?" Her frown gets deeper.

"No. I guess it's different now for me. I don't know." He leans against the counter. "Can we be done with this conversation?"

"I just wanted to make sure we were okay. You and me."

"Are we?"

"I feel like we are?" She spreads her hands. "I don't know."

"I don't have any problems with you."

"I don't have any problems with you either. Not really."

"Then I guess we're okay." Gabe steps toward her. "Um. Can I kiss you?"

"Yeah." She goes up on her toes and presses their mouths together lightly. "I'm going to go see if Pete wants help with Bx. You can wash the dishes."

"Thanks," says Gabe drily, but after he finishes hand-washing the whole sink full of dishes, he _does_ feel better. Him and Pete and Meagan, they _do_ work, and they can work it out. They _will_ work it out. 

He's Gabe fucking Saporta. He does what he wants.

*

Gabe hides in Pete's notebook room. It's totally empty of all furniture. There are stacks and stacks of notebooks surrounding a pile of pens and a fuzzy pink sleeping bag. Gabe takes a picture, just to keep for himself.

Then he texts Papi. He does what he wants but he needs to know Papi will still love him, even if his life is unconventional.

*

"Mijo, your life has always been unconventional. Since you were born and I looked at you. Your birth made my life unconventional as well. I will always love you, niño. Is this about Peter? You must call me back. I would like to hear your voice. Te amo."

_Press 7 to delete. Press 9 to save._

Gabe presses 9.

When he calls back, Papi doesn't answer; there's that little beep at the end of every ring that means he's on with someone else and not picking up the call waiting. So Gabe leaves his own voicemail:

"Hola, Papi. I'm sort of in love with Pete and dating him and maybe his girlfriend, too. Don't tell anyone, we're not ready to come out. I just wanted you to know, I guess. Maybe Pete will come for Hanukkah, if he can get time off the tour for it. Or, um, maybe Meagan will come so you can meet her. Um. We haven't really worked out any details. But. We love each other. So, um. I guess it'll all figure itself out at some point. If you talk to Abuela, tell her I'll call her this week. Um. Te amo."

*

Meagan gets a last-minute Saturday job and Pete has a tour meeting, so Gabe offers to watch Bronx. 

"We'll be cool," he says. "We'll be dinosaurs." This is the perfect opportunity to introduce Bronx to kale chips.

"Okay," says Pete, a little doubtfully. Which is insulting. Gabe has watched Bronx tons of times. Sure, that was back when he was a baby, but now he's a _person_ , which has to be even better, right? He can _talk_ now. In sentences.

*

Holy shit. Gabe takes it all back. Parenting is hard and Bronx is exhausting. And Gabe hopes Pete wasn't too attached to the daisies in the backyard, because instead of eating the kale chips, Bronx gnawed the heads off the daisies.

"Um. Why did you do that?"

"I'm preparing the land for our pack, Uncle Gabe!"

"Preparing the land for..."

"Our dinosaur pack is going to settle here," Bronx explains patiently. "Like _The Land Before Time_."

Gabe has no idea what that is.

"Dinosaurs roam in packs?" he asks.

"Some of them do. Don't you know anything about dinosaurs?"

"I know they eat this thing called kale chips."

"Is that a vegetable?" Bronx asks suspiciously.

"Bronx, dinos _love_ vegetables. I swear."

"Dinos love _foliage_ ," says Bronx carefully. "Not vegetables."

"Foliage like the flowers?"

"I didn't _eat_ the flowers."

"Come look at the kale chips. They're all green and curly. They totally look like foliage."

"After that, we can settle the land?"

"For sure. Maybe we'll bring out a tent and camp out."

Bronx looks suspicious. "I don't think dinosaurs sleep in tents. Meggy says they couldn't make ice cream because they don't have thumbs, so how can they zip up a bag?"

Gabe is at a total loss, but that's okay because Bronx just keeps talking, and then eats all the kale chips. He asks for ketchup, but Gabe counts it as a win.

*

As soon as Bronx falls asleep, Gabe checks his voice mail.

"Ah... mijo... you are always welcome to bring people home for holidays. There is always room for one more. Or many more. Ah..." Some throat clearing. "Thank you for telling me, Gabriel. I truly believe all love is from hashem. I am glad he has blessed you with so much. Te amo."

_Press 7 to --_

Gabe presses 9. He's never deleting that.

*

Pete comes home late and smells like beer. Bronx is asleep on Gabe's chest; Gabe is still watching _The Land Before Time_ , even though Bronx fell asleep about five minutes in.

"This movie is bullshit," he tells Pete. "I cried like six times already."

Pete stares at him from the foot of the couch, all forehead and nose in the shadows from the tv. "I came out tonight. To my band. I mean, they already knew, I just said everything officially?"

"Um." Gabe sits up and carefully deposits Bronx where he'd been lying. "What does that mean?"

"I told them we were together, you and me. And Meagan. But that I didn't want to talk about it in interviews or anything. But that you and me would probably get photographed together a lot more."

"What did they say?"

"Patrick said, How can you and Gabe be photographed together _more_?, and Joe said, Doesn't looking at Gabe naked make your dick soft?" Pete laughs. "And Andy was like, oh, so you're a V? Or a triad? And I was like, um, we haven't figured it out yet."

"Of course Andy knows all the right words for being with two people at once."

"I told him it's weird because you're with me and I'm with Meagan and sometimes we all fuck but _you_ aren't with Meagan. So. Then Joe asked me to stop talking about my dick." Pete rubs his face. "Why isn't Bronx in bed?"

"Well, we were settling the land? Then we settled the couch."

"He conned you."

"No!"

"Did he give you the big eyes and say, 'Uncle Gabe, I just want to spend time with you'?" Pete laughs and Gabe glares at him. "I'm sure it's true. It's just also convenient to avoiding bedtime. Give him to me -- I'll take him up."

"How drunk are you?"

"Not very, it's just that Joe spilled a pitcher and it got all over me. I only had a couple."

"A couple two or a couple four?" Gabe grins at him, though, and lifts Bronx off the couch to hand him over. "He's almost as big as you are."

"No sex talk in front of my kid."

"Pete! I meant, like, he's growing up!"

Pete bites his lip. "Oh."

"I think no sex talk in front of Bronx is a really good rule. Oh my god."

"Sorry. I didn't think..."

"Take him up. I'll meet you in the bedroom."

"Our bedroom," says Pete softly.

Gabe shakes his head, but smiles. "Yeah. It's just us tonight. Meagan's gone until morning."

Pete's eyes look hot, even in the dark. He climbs the stairs silently. Gabe kills the tv, shuts off the kitchen light, and follows. 

*

"You're so huge," whispers Pete, climbing into the bed. Every set of sheets is the same soft white, stained, lived-in, and they all make Pete glow when he lies on them.

"Can it just be us tonight?" asks Gabe.

"It is just us." Pete curls up next to him, and Gabe realizes he's lying on the bed the same way Meagan does, stretched out.

"No, I mean..." Gabe rolls onto his side. Pete needs a haircut. It's flopping into his eyes and Gabe's having 2005 flashbacks. Except this time Pete _loves him_.

Pete moves in and kisses him and it _is_ just like 2005, two dudes sharing a bed, not touching anywhere but their mouths. Gabe rolls on top of him, pulling one of his legs up so their dicks slide, and kisses him hard, holding him still, holding him down.

"I love you," Gabe breathes into his mouth. "I love you."

Pete rolls his hips so Gabe can feel how hard he is. "I love you too." Another kiss. "Suck me?"

"Yeah?" Gabe kisses his neck, the thorns, scrapes his teeth over Pete's nipple just to feel him shiver. "Get your dick in my mouth?"

"It's small, I bet --"

Gabe leans up and puts a finger over Pete's mouth. Pete licks it, sucks it in. "Not tonight. Please."

"Okay," whispers Pete. "Not tonight."

"That's all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's --"

"I love you," says Gabe. It feels urgent in his mouth, pressing up through his throat. He wants to shout it, bite it onto Pete, tattoo it in bruises.

"I love you too."

"Keep saying it," says Gabe, and moves back down, kissing Pete's belly button, the bartskull. He sucks the head of Pete's cock into his mouth. It's that bitter-salty taste he likes, weirdly tangy even when Pete doesn't eat pineapple. He presses the head of Pete's cock against the top of his mouth, takes it deeper.

He shuts his eyes when Pete says, "I love you, I love you, I love you," and puts his hand into Gabe's hair, touches his face. "I love you, I love you."

*

Gabe is waiting to freak out for real. Waiting for that moment when he looks around and has to run away. Instead, he keeps looking around and feeling so fucking content. This is what the whole rest of his life is going to be like -- Pete and Meagan and Bronx and sunshine and sex and love and desire and having to figure out the complicated parts. That last one scares him, but he knows they _can_ because they _have_. 

He and Pete have always loved each other enough to make up for whatever else happens; Gabe tries to imagine something that could change that, and really honestly search-his-soul, pray-to-a-god-he-isn't-sure-he-believes-in cannot.

*

"Shh, shh, go back to sleep." 

Gabe wakes up at the whisper, feeling nauseated, his heart beating too fast. Panic. "What's wrong?" he croaks.

Pete and Meagan both look at him from the other side of the bed.

"I'm home early," says Meagan softly. "Go back to sleep."

"You're not supposed to be home until tomorrow."

"It is tomorrow." She smiles crookedly. "I needed to be here."

"You want the middle?"

"I get the middle," says Pete sleepily, moving closer to Gabe. "Peter pumpkin eater pile."

"I'm glad you're home." Gabe watches her settle onto the bed, just one blanket pulled over her; Pete is under at least four. He watches until she's comfortable on a pillow, sighing as she relaxes into Pete.

"I'm glad I'm home too," she says, and yawns.

Gabe rubs his chest, telling himself to calm down. 

"Love you," he whispers into the dark.

"Love you too," say Pete and Meagan in unison.

Gabe shuts his eyes and goes back to sleep. Everything's okay.

*

When Gabe wakes up, he's alone. The shower is wet, the water is hot immediately. Gabe scrubs off, washes his hair. 

Downstairs, Meagan's curled up with Bear on the couch, coffee in one hand. A tablet is balanced on her knees and something about guacamole is on the television, muted. She smiles up at him, her hair wet and pulled back into a tight braid.

In the kitchen, Pete is sipping coffee with so much creamer in it, it's practically beige. They're out of s'mores creamer and on to "Pumpkin Pie Spice"; Gabe frowns at it and takes his black, even though it tastes kind of like gasoline. The more he drinks Meagan's coffee, the more easily he understands Pete's dedication to weird creamers.

"Say hi to Bob, Gabe," says Pete, and holds out the phone.

"Hi, Bob," says Gabe obediently. Even though the phone isn't on speaker, Gabe can hear McLynn yelling on the other end -- _Is that fucking Saporta? Fuck that motherfucker, put him on the fucking phone! Goddamn it, Wentz!_ Gabe grins at Pete.

"Gotta go, Bob, talk later," says Pete, and hangs up in the middle of Bob yelling.

"What did he need?" asks Gabe, sitting down at the table.

"Just called to say hi," Pete says cheerfully. Gabe rolls his eyes. "No, really, just a check-in -- tour is in a week, we're setting everything up. Surprise guests, that kind of thing."

"Surprise guests?"

"We could have surprise guest Gabe Saporta if you wanted."

"No." Gabe bites his lip. "I should go back to New York, huh?"

"Or stay here. Bronx is staying. Meggy."

"They live here."

Pete swirls his finger in his cup and licks it off. He doesn't meet Gabe's eyes. "You can too. Bring some more clothes out, stay here more often."

All Gabe can think of to say is, "Kind of fast."

"It's been ten years."

Gabe has to laugh at that. "You want me in your house?"

"I really do. So does Megs. So does Bronx, you know. Unlimited time with Uncle Gabe? Awesome."

"He'll overdose on me and suddenly I won't be rad anymore."

"Never." Pete grins at him. "You're always going to be rad."

Gabe slouches a little in his chair until his feet stretch across and he can press his legs against Pete's. "So you want me to stay?"

"I want you to stay forever, but we can start with while I'm on tour. And then when I get back."

"Papi wants us to come to him for Hanukkah. Like, even if you can't, maybe Megs and Bronx and I can."

"You'll have to take lots of pictures of Bronx's first Hanukkah."

"Pete, I don't know how to do this. What if I fuck us up?"

"We can't ever be fucked up. Come on. It's you and me. We're never going to be fucked up."

"I fuck up everything, though."

"So do I." Pete pushes his coffee to the side. "We can fuck up together and then work shit out."

"I couldn't work it out with Erin." Gabe pushes his coffee away, too. "What if I can't work it out with you?"

"Unpossible. What the fuck? There's never been anything we couldn't work out."

"What if there's something?"

"There's _not_ ," says Pete vehemently. "There never will be. We'll always be able to figure our shit out because we love each other. That's it. That's the end of it."

"You mean, like, we love each other in a way that won't let us fuck each other up?" asks Gabe, remembering what Meagan had said to him last week. He'd scoffed at her, but Pete's saying the same thing, and sounds so sure about it.

"Yeah. Exactly. Some people love each other in a way that destroys them. Some people love each other in a way that, like, never affects anything. And we love each other in a way that will always fix whatever's broken."

"You can't just say stuff like that."

"I'm not just saying it. It's reality. Our reality."

"Because you say so."

"You know it's true. I say it because it's true." Pete leans across the table and takes one of Gabe's hands. "Stop trying to find reasons why this won't work. We know it will work. Just let it happen."

"Every time I relax and let things happen, the universe fucks me up."

"Let the universe give you something nice, then." Pete squeezes his hand and Gabe squeezes back.

"You're the best thing the universe could give me," Gabe says softly, and kisses their joined hands.

  


**Author's Note:**

> **Inspired Works**
> 
> **Fanart by inlovewithnight!**  
>  [Artist's post](http://inlovewithnight.dreamwidth.org/360045.html)  
>  [Image 1](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/inlovewithnight/1378752/227305/227305_600.jpg) | [Image 2](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/inlovewithnight/1378752/227341/227341_600.jpg) | [Image 3](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/inlovewithnight/1378752/227042/227042_600.jpg)
> 
>  **Fanmix by Morganya!**  
>  [Download](https://www.box.com/files/0/f/0/1/f_8296245260) | [Streaming](http://8tracks.com/morganya/inconvenient-fireworks)
> 
> Inconvenient Fireworks
> 
> 1\. Gregory & The Hawk - A Wish (m4a)  
>  2\. Vienna Teng - Stray Italian Greyhound  
>  3\. Mojo Men - Sit Down I Think I Love You  
>  4\. Medina - Threesome  
>  5\. New Young Pony Club - Ice Cream  
>  6\. Jellyfish - Sebrina, Paste And Plato  
>  7\. Kidneythieves - Pretty  
>  8\. Stereo Total - L'Amour A' 3  
>  9\. Genitorturers - Flesh Is The Law  
>  10\. Annie Lennox - Waiting In Vain  
>  11\. Great Big Sea - Stumbling In  
>  12\. The Pipettes - I Love You


End file.
